For once, America is running at top speed to catch up with the European Union. In levying a record fine against Intel, the world’s largest chipmaker, the EU competition authorities have let it be known that a dominant company’s efforts to crush rivals by threatening customers or rigging a price schedule will not be tolerated. President Barack Obama’s new team is in the early stages of saying “we agree”. After years in which the Bush administration allowed dominant companies to just about do as they pleased, Christine Varney, the president’s new antitrust cop, is running around Washington telling business groups that the enforcement hiatus is over.

Which is of special importance to high-tech industries. The new shift “will be bad news for heavyweights in the tech industries – companies like Google and Microsoft”, says Herbert Hovenkamp, a professor of law at University of Iowa College. He might be right. If he is, any believer in the ability of free, competitive markets to produce a rapid rate of innovation and prices that do not include monopoly profits can only add: “Good thing.”